The Perception Process: Its Application to Work Settings

Understanding the perception process and being aware of its complexities can help develop insights about ourselves and may help in reading others. Perceived reality, not actual reality, is the key to understanding behavior. How we perceive others and ourselves is at the root of our actions and intentions. The words we use, the way we look and the body language we display communicates our view of the world. The key to understand-ing perception is to recognize that it is a unique interpretation of the situation, not an exact recording of it. In short, perception is a very complex cognitive process that yields a unique picture of the world, a picture that may be different from reality. The importance of perception and communications in guiding our behavior needs to be understood for effective relationships with others. In other words, people’s individual differences and uniqueness are largely the result of the cognitive processes. The cognitive processes suggest that, like computers, humans are information processors. However, today’s complex computers are very simple information processing units when compared with human information processing. This article focuses on the nature and importance of the perception process and how this process can be applied by managers to understand and manage employees ’ behavior in the work setting